Three Weddings and a Baby
However, there was not even a hint of a skip in his long strides as he entered the banqueting hall and began his search.
‘Psst.’
Jennie spun round to find her fellow bridesmaid, Coreen, strategically sitting behind the last available potted palm.
Drat Cameron’s generosity! The open bar, flowing with champagne cocktails, meant that, instead of trailing off into the night, most of the guests had returned to the reception to make sure her stepbrother got his money’s worth. The room was heaving, and her fantasy of finding a quiet corner had already died. Now she was just hoping to find a seat.
Coreen parted the fronds of the palm and leaned forward. The effect of her nineteen-fifties pin-up looks surrounded by all that greenery really was comical, but Jennie couldn’t bring herself to even muster a giggle. She waved back at Coreen, not even bothering to smile.
‘I have a spare chair and two of these,’ Coreen said, shoving an open bottle of champagne through the foliage. ‘Care to join me?’
There were angels in heaven! Jennie let out a long breath. ‘Now you’re talking,’ she replied and swiftly skirted the large terracotta urn to plonk herself in the last available seat in the room.
Coreen, as always, looked flawless. She took her business seriously, and Jennie had never seen her dress in a twenty-first century outfit. Today she had on a fifties prom dress in an icy pink that complemented Jennie’s oyster shift dress.
Coreen slid an open bottle of champagne across the table towards her. Jennie’s fingers closed around the rough foil at the neck. ‘So what are we drinking to?’ She paused. ‘And please don’t say “Happy Ever Afters”!’
Without waiting for an answer, she put the bottle to her lips and swigged. She took a long gulp, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and let the bottle land with a satisfying thunk on the table. When she glanced up, she found Coreen looking at her, a knowing smile on her sculpted lips.
‘Wedding day blues, too, huh?’
‘You have no idea,’ Jennie said dryly and lifted the bottle again. Coreen, in the meantime, managed to attract the attention of a waiter, despite the fact he was being waved at from all over the banqueting hall. Well, maybe it wasn’t that surprising. She was Coreen, after all. She signalled they’d like a couple of glasses and he saluted her, all the while giving her a saucy lopsided smile, then scuttled off to do her bidding. Coreen didn’t turn round again until his rather fine backside had disappeared into the crowd.
‘Me, too,’ she said, after letting out a long sigh.
Jennie couldn’t help but laugh. ‘The wedding day blues don’t seem to be putting you off your stride much.’
A wicked little smirk pulled at Coreen’s lips, and then the corners of her mouth turned down. ‘It’s not the same, though, is it? Flirting’s all well and good, but on days like today, everyone’s gushing about love and promises and for ever. It can make a girl decidedly—’
‘Suicidal?’ Jennie suggested.
‘I was going to go with single, but your word is…descriptive.’
The waiter returned to flirt some more with Coreen. She accepted the glasses he proffered and dismissed him with a wave of her hand and a movie-queen smile. ‘I’ve seen that look in a man’s eyes often enough to know he wasn’t thinking about love and promises and for ever.’
Still, it didn’t stop her glancing over her shoulder to get a second look at the retreating fine backside. Jennie pulled a glass across the table and filled it with bubbles.
‘And you are thinking about that?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ Coreen held up her glass so Jennie could fill it. ‘You?’
Jennie opened her mouth to make some flippant remark and found she couldn’t speak. Her vision blurred. To disguise what was happening, she reached for her glass and knocked half the contents back. The bubbles lodged like boulders in her throat.
A few short weeks ago she’d believed in all of it. Love and promises. Forever. But not now. Maybe not ever again.
‘Hey.’ The soft word came from somewhere near her right ear and she realised that the fuzzy pink blur crouching beside her chair was Coreen. Jennie willed her mouth to stop quivering, clamped her teeth shut. This time she used the backs of her hands to wipe her cheeks.
Why now? Why, after lasting all day without caving in, had she suddenly fallen to pieces? It was really pathetic. Maybe it was the way she’d seen Cameron look at Alice earlier on. She’d compared it to what she’d thought she’d found and realised it had all been a dream. A whirlwind. And the knowledge made her ache deep inside, way beneath her muscles and bones.
‘You never know,’ Coreen said, keeping contact by leaving a hand on Jennie’s knee, but perching back on her seat, ‘we might even be able to trade these dresses in for the real thing one day.’
But that just made Jennie cry all the harder, until her nose felt bubbly and her throat was hoarse.
The hand on her knee squeezed gently. ‘Although, secretly, I’ve toyed with the idea of wearing nothing at all when the fateful day arrives,’ Coreen added.
And suddenly crying turned to hysteria. The tears still flowed, but her sides started to hurt and she clutched at Coreen, and Coreen clutched her just as hard back. Somewhere in the middle of the rib-hurting cackles, Jennie became aware of someone standing a few feet away, looking at her, but she was enjoying the much-needed rush of endorphins too much to pay attention to who it was.
Coreen fell silent and Jennie’s unaccompanied giggles seemed overly loud and jarring. She gulped the last remnants of mirth down and wiped her eyes again, this time in a more ladylike fashion. Her eyelashes were clogged together on one side of her left eye, and she opened her eyes as wide as she could until the lashes untangled. It was only then that she focused on the ominously still figure in front of her.
Her mouth dropped open and every last bit of hilarity left her body, taking all the oxygen with it.
The man standing there was tall, impeccably dressed. His dark hair was cropped severely close, adding a hardness to his already angular features. But it was his eyes that took her hostage—a clear pale blue that could easily have been compared to the soft colour on the horizon on a hazy summer’s day. Only, as they pinned her to her seat, they were as warm as an arctic breeze. She even shivered a little, gripped her arms across her middle.
‘Jennie?’ There was an uncharacteristic waver in Coreen’s voice, and it sounded distant, slightly unreal. ‘Do you know this guy?’
Jennie swallowed, and that one tiny motion seemed to get her functioning again. Her voice returned. It sounded warm, almost normal, when she spoke, which surprised her to no end. She didn’t take her eyes off the man dominating her personal space.
‘Coreen, this is. This is Alex Dangerfield.’
Alex nodded at Coreen, but he, too, didn’t look away. Maybe he couldn’t either. And it wasn’t just her sight—every sense was locked on to him. But it had always been that way. Right from the very start.
‘You know him, then?’ Coreen sounded more than a little relieved.
And then he spoke in his low, rich voice and it rumbled through her, sending tingles up the backs of Jennie’s knees.
‘She really ought to,’ he said, not even a twitch of a smile softening the sarcastic tone. ‘I’m her husband.’
CHAPTER TWO
COREEN, who had stood up some time after Alex’s arrival, now sat abruptly back down in her chair. For a long time she just stared at him, and then she transferred her gaze to Jennie.
‘Your…?’ She trailed off, seemingly unable to utter the word husband.
Jennie knew exactly how she felt.
Coreen’s eyes grew wide. ‘Is this true?’
Jennie nodded. Unfortunately, it was. She’d have heartily liked to deny it, but Alex was the irritating sort of man who would undoubtedly produce a pristine marriage certificate from his inside pocket at an inconvenient moment like this. The thought infuriated her.
In his absence, her anger towards him had been muddled up with stupid yearnings, weighed down with grief and regrets, but now it sprang free, unpolluted and unfettered, and rose up from the pit of her stomach and clouded her eyes just as effectively as her earlier tears had done.
Now? Here? At Cameron’s wedding?
What was he playing at?
She opened her mouth to ask him just that, but he cut her off by talking across her to Coreen.
‘Now we’ve made the introductions, do you think I might have a private word with my wife?’
Jennie flinched as he said the last word. She didn’t feel like his wife. Didn’t feel like the centre of his universe.
Coreen regained some of her usual faultless composure where men were concerned. A glint in her eyes told Jennie she was ready to give Alex some of her legendary sass if he tried anything funny. ‘I’m not leaving you alone with Jennie unless she says it’s okay.’
Jennie almost laughed. If the situation were less dire, she’d have been the first to book a ringside seat for a face-off between Coreen and Alex. But then she glanced at her husband and she changed her mind. She’d never seen him like this—so cold, so…hostile. Maybe, if she’d seen this side of him during their whirlwind courtship she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to say ‘I do’ quite so hastily.
After all he’d put her through, she certainly didn’t. Or, even if that wasn’t quite true, she wanted it to be. So it almost counted.
‘It’s okay,’ she told Coreen, and stood up. ‘Alex and I. Well, we…’
‘Have unfinished business,’ he said.
We are unfinished business, she wanted to say as she tried to work out if this was all some weird hallucination, as the thump of the music filtered back into her consciousness and she became aware of other people in the room again. Lots of people. Reality felt just as strange and unconnected, too, she discovered.
But it struck her that as much as she wanted to grab Alex by the scruff of his neck and make him explain properly why having a honeymoon with his new bride hadn’t been the top of his list of priorities, she didn’t have that luxury at present.
She had to get Alex out of here. Now. Before her father and Marion appeared. Jennie glanced around the room, suddenly glad the party was still in full swing. It made it much easier to blend into the background—something that was normally her worst fear. If things had wound down by now there would have been far too many speculative glances, far too many itching ears.
And, as much as she hated the idea of being the obedient little wife, the only way she could see that happening was if she did what Alex wanted and had this ‘private word’ with him.
It was ironic that during their pitifully short marriage—record-breakingly short—she’d craved nothing more than private time with him.
‘Shall we?’ he said, and motioned for Jennie to walk ahead of him. He’d gestured towards the large double doors that led to the hotel foyer. Jennie gave a tight smile to Coreen, then strode through the packed dance floor, weaving nimbly round the miscellaneous dancers.
Nobody could find out who Alex was. The uproar it would cause would not only get her in a lot of hot water, but the family scandal would overshadow the whole day. Normally, she wasn’t averse to stealing the limelight from just about anybody, and she knew quite well that hers were the antics everybody filed their social memories by.
Do you remember at Josh’s christening when Jennie…? Or Barb’s fiftieth when she…?
And that couldn’t happen to Alice and Cameron’s wedding day. If she caused a scene, nobody would remember how delicately beautiful the bride had looked or how heart-breakingly romantic the groom’s speech had been; they’d just label the day as the one when Jennie and her secret husband had given them a firework display they’d never forget.
Thankfully, Alex was her polar opposite when it came to hogging the spotlight, and she was counting on him to want somewhere quiet and civilised to say whatever he had to say.
They were almost at the doors now and she glanced over her shoulder. Why, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t need her eyes to check if Alex was following her; the prickles running up and down her back confirmed he was close enough to reach out and grab her if she was tempted to bolt. Which she was. He was a very sensible man.
She quickly turned to stare straight ahead again. There was a fire in his eyes that was anything but sensible, and then she began to worry that she’d read the whole situation wrong. He didn’t look as if he was on the verge of being quiet or civilised. Perhaps it’d be a better plan to convince him to meet her somewhere else in the morning, when they were both in a better frame of mind.
Why was he here? Why now?
Scalding anger spiralled up inside her. What gave him the right to come and capsize her life again? What more could he possibly want from her that he hadn’t already taken?
As they reached the foyer, she could see it was virtually empty, populated only by a couple of tired-looking hotel employees and a guest she didn’t recognize. Once they were through the double doors, she headed into a quiet nook, just under the shelter of the grand staircase, and turned to face Alex.
Despite her swift about-face, he didn’t bump into her. Not quite. But he stopped perilously close, only millimetres away. The prickles running up and down her spine shifted accordingly, flowing round to the front of her body, then up her neck and into her cheeks, making every follicle on her head tense. It was like being jabbed all over by a thousand acupuncture needles—and nowhere near as relaxing.
She took a step backwards and asked the question that had been clanging around her head ever since he’d materialised out of nowhere in the function room. ‘What are you doing here, Alex?’
He stood there, terrifyingly still, not even blinking. ‘Jennie, you’re my wife! Why would you think that I wouldn’t come and find you?’
Hot, salty tears burned the back of Jennie’s eyelids. This was what she’d wanted, what she’d prayed for—to hear those words in his deep, rumbling voice. When she’d run away from him, deep down in her subconscious, this was what she’d ached for. But it was only when he hadn’t followed that she’d picked her emotions apart and realised it.
But it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
In her tear-soaked daydreams he’d pulled her to him, pressed warm kisses to her face, whispered his devotion. In her dreams he’d never looked at her with such disdain. No, the words were right, but everything else was wrong, all wrong. And she couldn’t let him see how weak it made her feel.
‘Well, you found me.’ She put her hands on her hips, raised just one eyebrow. If there was one thing Alex couldn’t resist it was a challenge.
She hadn’t thought it possible for him to be more of a foreboding presence towering over her, but in his stillness he hardened further and his eyes narrowed.
‘I came for two reasons… There are things you need to know and, frankly, I think you owe me an explanation.’
An explanation. He wanted an explanation?
Her jaw muscles squeezed themselves into knots. ‘Is that all?’
She hated herself as she waited for his answer, knowing that a small part of her still wanted to hear him say he’d come for her, that he needed her. Those arctic-blue eyes looked her up and down.
‘Possibly. I’m not sure yet.’ From the look on his face, anyone would have thought he really didn’t care.
Jennie’s insides crumpled uncomfortably, as if she were a piece of paper that had been squashed into a ball and discarded. The only way she knew how to stop herself disintegrating was to unleash the rage she’d been nursing for the last few weeks.
‘Go to hell!’
At that moment Jennie wished she hadn’t been brought up so well, because she’d have dearly loved to wipe that condescending look off his face with a stinging slap, the kind that would probably have hurt her as much as it hurt him. The satisfaction at seeing him lose his cool, just for a nanosecond, would be worth it.
She turned on her stilettos and strode off in the opposite direction, no destination in mind, just needing to get as far away from him as possible.
Two things happened at once—she heard her stepmother’s disembodied voice coming from above her and a large hand shot out and shackled her wrist. Her skin burned against his as she tried to twist herself free.
Only one thought filled her mind—she wasn’t ready for this. None of it. Which was strange, because all she’d wanted for the last few weeks was to see him. She’d fantasised about it so many times. At first, she’d dreamed about throwing her arms around him and showing him enthusiastically how much she’d missed him. After that, her imagination had turned more to stamping her foot and screaming. Lastly, she’d envisioned herself looking stunning and aloof as he grovelled for forgiveness. But now she realised she wasn’t even close to being ready to see Alex. It was as if someone had reached a fist down inside of her and pulled her inside out. She needed time to put everything back in its proper place.
And she certainly wasn’t ready for her family to find out. She could imagine the look in her father’s eyes, the utter disappointment. Humiliation washed over her in a warm wave.
But Jennie knew how to pull herself together, knew how to suck all that negative energy in and turn it into something bright and glittering. It was what she did best—what people loved her for.
She looked up to see her stepmother descending the large oak staircase and, with great effort, flicked the inner switch that converted all the dross caking her insides into dazzling pure gold.
‘There you are,’ Marion said, her gaze wandering over Alex and then returning to Jennie. ‘I was just coming to find you.’
There was an awkward moment when nobody looked anybody truly in the eye, then Marion noticed Alex’s hand clamped around Jennie’s wrist and what was left of her serene smile melted away. She looked back at Jennie, a question in her eyes. Jennie did her best to send back an SOS, tempted to bat it out in Morse code with her eyelashes. Marion’s head didn’t move, but Jennie saw her agreement in a tiny blink that only went halfway.
Marion stepped forward and offered a hand to Alex, the picture of a gracious hostess—apart from her pinprick pupils. ‘I’m sorry, I know I should be able to put names to faces after all the poring over seating charts and guest lists I’ve done, but with a wedding this size it’s been hard to keep track. Are you one of Alice’s friends?’
Alex didn’t react straight away, unwilling to release his grip on his runaway bride. It was the first time he’d had any physical contact with her in weeks, which certainly hadn’t been what he’d been expecting when he’d booked a romantic honeymoon in Paris as a surprise for his bride-to-be.
He glanced at Jennie, at the open door at the other end of the hotel foyer, and reckoned he had a ninety-nine per cent chance of snaring her again if she bolted the minute he let go. With anyone else he’d have estimated a hundred per cent chance, but this was Jennie—a woman with a gift for the unpredictable.
How different it had been the last time he’d touched her, when he’d woken her and told her about the call that had lit up his mobile phone in the early hours of the morning, of the family emergency that was about to change his life for ever. She’d been warm and fuzzy with sleep, and she’d pulled him back to kiss him before he left and they’d said their goodbyes with the keen sense of desperation only newly-weds truly understood.
He peeled his hand from around Jennie’s wrist and felt cool air fill his palm as she snatched her hand away.
He’d promised her he’d be back as soon as possible and, even though that had been much longer than either of them had anticipated, he’d kept his word. But she hadn’t believed him.
That had stung. It had also pulled the loose end of a string of doubts that had been unravelling in him ever since. Surely, if his wife knew anything about him at all, she knew he was a man who kept his word, honoured his commitments. It was part of the reason he was here tracking her down.
While in his darkest moments he’d wanted to wash his hands and walk away from this whole mess, he couldn’t do that. Or at least he wouldn’t be able to do that with a clear conscience until he found out that there truly was no way forward. And, to do that, he needed to discover why Jennie had so little faith in him, and why she hadn’t kept her side of the bargain.
He wasn’t the only one who’d made promises. They both had. But it had seemed he’d picked a wife who’d struggled to keep them for much more than a week. Heat flashed behind his eyes, spiking through him. Why had she let him make the most life-altering, soul-wrenching promises a man could make to a woman if she didn’t trust him to keep them?
‘Marion Hunter,’ the woman in front of him said, startling him a little.
Jennie had mentioned her stepmother a lot during their brief relationship, always with affection and respect. Marion’s hand was delicate, but her shake was firm and Alex knew instantly that he liked her. She was no pushover, no matter how cultured and elegant she seemed.
He’d been so consumed with finding Jennie that he realised he hadn’t thought about anything past that, his mind a carousel of all the imagined excuses she’d have for her abominable behaviour. He hadn’t even considered what he’d say or do if he met a member of her family this evening, and that just wasn’t like him—he always saw the big picture, always planned ahead.
What had she told them when she’d returned from her honeymoon on her own? Especially when she’d eloped to Las Vegas with a man they hadn’t even met.
Marion Hunter scowled slightly as she slid her hand from his. He’d bet Jennie hadn’t painted him in a flattering light. But that didn’t matter. He didn’t care about being the villain; he just wanted answers.
He’d been so caught up in his own thoughts he realised he hadn’t even opened his mouth to speak, and now he rectified his lack of manners. ‘Alex Dangerfield,’ he said, with a hint of a smile in his eyes, even if it didn’t reach his mouth. But Marion Hunter looked at him blankly, as if the name meant nothing to her, and he guessed that as the scowl lines on her forehead returned she was mentally scanning guest lists, seeking a match. He decided to help her out.
‘Jennie’s hu—’
‘Half!’ yelled Jennie beside him, suddenly springing into life. She was smiling brightly, and her outburst had been one of her usual exuberant declarations, but there had been a tinge of desperation in the tone, a hint of a squeak because she’d pitched it too high. Marion just looked puzzled.
‘What I mean is…’ She took a deep breath. ‘Alex is my other half, my…my new… man,’ she finished lamely, all the energy and life whooshing out of her like air out of a balloon. Then she grabbed his hand and squeezed it, attempted to mould herself to his rigid side.
‘We had an argument, and I thought Alex wasn’t going to be able to make it, but he did, and at first I was shocked, but now I’m so pleased—really pleased.’
And then she looked up at him, her eyes begging, and the truth hit Alex like one of those cartoon ten ton weights that always landed on the stooge’s head and squashed him flat. Because that was what he was—Jennie’s stooge.
She hadn’t told them. Hadn’t even thought to mention the trivial matter of finding someone to spend the rest of her life with. How stupid of him to have expected otherwise.
Any pleasure at meeting Jennie’s stepmother evaporated in a blistering cloud of rage. That was all he was to his wife—an insignificant detail.
Well, he didn’t care what her family thought, didn’t care what hot water his presence here got her into. He wasn’t going to waste any more time.